Popular culture often champions freedom as the fundamentally American way of life and celebrates the virtues of independence and self-reliance. But film and television have also explored the tension ...
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Popular culture often champions freedom as the fundamentally American way of life and celebrates the virtues of independence and self-reliance. But film and television have also explored the tension between freedom and other core values, such as order and political stability. What looks like healthy, productive, and creative freedom from one point of view may look like chaos, anarchy, and a source of destructive conflict from another. Film and television continually pose the question: Can Americans deal with their problems on their own, or must they rely on political elites to manage their lives? This book explores the ways television shows such as Star Trek, The X-Files, South Park, and Deadwood and films such as The Searchers, Mars Attacks!, and The Aviator have portrayed both top-down and bottom-up models of order. Drawing on John Locke, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, and other proponents of freedom, the book contrasts the classical liberal vision of America—particularly its emphasis on the virtues of spontaneous order--with the Marxist understanding of the “culture industry” and the Hobbesian model of absolute state control. The book concludes with a discussion of the impact of 9/11 on film and television, and the new anxieties emerging in contemporary alien invasion narratives: the fear of a global technocracy that seeks to destroy the nuclear family, religious faith, local government, and other traditional bulwarks against the absolute state.Less

The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture : Liberty vs. Authority in American Film and TV

Paul A. Cantor

Published in print: 2012-11-05

Popular culture often champions freedom as the fundamentally American way of life and celebrates the virtues of independence and self-reliance. But film and television have also explored the tension between freedom and other core values, such as order and political stability. What looks like healthy, productive, and creative freedom from one point of view may look like chaos, anarchy, and a source of destructive conflict from another. Film and television continually pose the question: Can Americans deal with their problems on their own, or must they rely on political elites to manage their lives? This book explores the ways television shows such as Star Trek, The X-Files, South Park, and Deadwood and films such as The Searchers, Mars Attacks!, and The Aviator have portrayed both top-down and bottom-up models of order. Drawing on John Locke, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, and other proponents of freedom, the book contrasts the classical liberal vision of America—particularly its emphasis on the virtues of spontaneous order--with the Marxist understanding of the “culture industry” and the Hobbesian model of absolute state control. The book concludes with a discussion of the impact of 9/11 on film and television, and the new anxieties emerging in contemporary alien invasion narratives: the fear of a global technocracy that seeks to destroy the nuclear family, religious faith, local government, and other traditional bulwarks against the absolute state.

From the dead body to the virtual body and from material memorials to virtual memorials, one thing is clear: the bodiless nature of memorialization of the dead across cultures. In postindustrial, ...
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From the dead body to the virtual body and from material memorials to virtual memorials, one thing is clear: the bodiless nature of memorialization of the dead across cultures. In postindustrial, Protestant, and capitalist societies such as the United States, this trend seems much more prominent and is moving at a faster rate than in the developing world. As globalization and industrialization increase, traditional cultural values and norms will be further eroded, and the trend toward bodiless memorialization will only intensify. Additionally, as the world's population and accompanying land scarcity issues continue to rise, the body as corpse will continue to disappear as countries look for new and innovative ways to dispose of the dead. Ultimately, the rise of memorialization is concurrent with the disappearance of the body. This book examines this disturbing trend, analyzing various types of memorialization and questioning the impetus behind these newly emerging forms of remembrance.Less

Virtual Afterlives : Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century

Candi K. Cann

Published in print: 2014-05-15

From the dead body to the virtual body and from material memorials to virtual memorials, one thing is clear: the bodiless nature of memorialization of the dead across cultures. In postindustrial, Protestant, and capitalist societies such as the United States, this trend seems much more prominent and is moving at a faster rate than in the developing world. As globalization and industrialization increase, traditional cultural values and norms will be further eroded, and the trend toward bodiless memorialization will only intensify. Additionally, as the world's population and accompanying land scarcity issues continue to rise, the body as corpse will continue to disappear as countries look for new and innovative ways to dispose of the dead. Ultimately, the rise of memorialization is concurrent with the disappearance of the body. This book examines this disturbing trend, analyzing various types of memorialization and questioning the impetus behind these newly emerging forms of remembrance.

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